‘Chileans ex Romania’: Resettlement, Containment, and the Limits of UNHCR’s Global Ambitions during the Cold War

Abstract After Pinochet’s military coup in 1973, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) coordinated the resettlement of thousands of refugees from Chile. An unusual destination was Romania, which admitted the largest number of refugees in communist Eastern Europe. Yet this symbolic gesture soon proved unsustainable: by 1977, nearly 450 of the 1,500 Chileans resettled in Romania had fled again, seeking asylum in Western Europe. This article traces this ‘second escape’ and examines how UNHCR responded to this secondary movement. It first reconstructs the international effort to resettle Chileans across the Iron Curtain and highlights Romania’s strategic motivations. It then explores how deteriorating conditions led to renewed flight. Finally, it analyses UNHCR’s reluctance to acknowledge the program’s failure. The article argues that, under High Commissioner Sadruddin Aga Khan, resettlement became a tool of Cold War diplomacy—expanding UNHCR’s global footprint at the expense of its protective mandate.